The House on Persimmon Road (23 page)

It was an enormous discovery, she knew. She understood that no matter how forbiddingly awesome electricity might be—it was now quite reasonably possible for her to return. The problem as she now saw it was to avail herself of that flow, soaking it up until her aura filled out with good, solid flesh.

The electrical impulses in Lottie’s brain put everything into order the same way they had when she ruled the house and was the comfortable wife of Elmer. But instead of planning when to set bread to rising, when to churn butter, when to boil starch, and what day in spring she would take up wool carpets against moth eggs and put down hooked rag hugs against summer’s dust, Lottie planned her emergence into a world she found wanting, and one which she hadn’t yet found a better replacement for, despite what the Good Book said. She wasn’t blaspheming. She made a vow that she’d make things right with Himself the instant she was decipherable and got her voice back.

Meanwhile she dusted her bones, aired Pauline’s gray silk, the stockings, Agnes’s shoes, laid out undergarments, a hair brush, and bone hairpins; her hair was long and she wore it knotted at the back of her head. She was probably tolerably gray by now. She wished she had her cameo and wedding ring, but those could be retrieved from hiding once she could direct Milo where to dig. Of course, her family Bible would have to be handy, else how could she prove who she was to Justine?

Since there was no electricity in the attic, all of these things would have to be moved downstairs for the event. The experience in the bathroom with that freeloader, Kessler, proved that. She couldn’t tolerate the anxiety of wondering if she’d make it back to her bones in time or not. Best to have them on hand. Best to be sitting right on them when she plugged herself into the flow.

By the time she thought she had perfected her plan, down to the last detail but one, Justine and her family were noisily arriving home.

She went downstairs to join in the celebration. The two old biddies had passed their driver’s tests! Unexpectedly, envy tweaked Lottie. Mayhap one day she could set aside her fear and could herself master the automobile. Leastways the machine was a lot less balky than a pair of mules.

There was a sly smile at the ends of Agnes’s perennially downturned lips as she toasted Pauline. “Now the whole world knows how old you are. It’s in a computer.”

“You deplorable old nag! You were eavesdropping! At least I don’t have any restrictions. I can drive at night.”

Justine stepped in before there was a full-fledged fight. “Mothers dear,” she said brightly, “have some more champagne.”

She was truly proud of their achievement. What scared her was that they were both making long verbal lists, trying to outdo one another, of the places they would go and errands they could run, while behind the wheel of the only vehicle among them. Of course, should there be a mishap, insurance would replace the car. But what of Mother and Agnes? The images of their maimed and broken bodies, laying in a ditch somewhere, blunted her gaiety.

A burst of panic made Justine’s pulse fluctuate wildly. “Mother,” she pleaded, “please reconsider.”

Pauline clamped her mouth into a thin line as if she had been taking lessons from Agnes. “No. You promised if I passed my driver’s test, which I did last week, I could use the car to job hunt. The State of Alabama says I’m equipped to drive. Here’s proof.” She waved her temporary license under Justine’s nose with righteous indignation. “Nothing on this says I need a guide, or someone sitting next to me in the front seat. Especially that bully, Agnes.”

“I’m only thinking of your safety.”

“I will never get a job if I have to drag Agnes, wearing that ghastly purple, everywhere. In addition to which she’s become positively mewly. Wheeler this and Wheeler that.” Pauline mimicked Agnes perfectly. “You’ve put me off with one excuse or other, but now I have an interview. How do I look?”

“You look fine.”

“Professional? This is a Coco Chanel suit, years old. You don’t think it’s overdone? I’ll make a good impression, won’t I?”

“I’m afraid you’re going to impress yourself into another car or the pavement. Mother, please…”

Pauline drew herself up. “Justine, if I have to, I’ll manage without any encouragement whatsoever from you. And, I would remind you that you got your first license at aged sixteen. Not to mention your father bought you a car. Did I ever withhold your keys?”

Justine felt small for being anxious, and smaller still for refusing her mother the station wagon. The panic she felt was becoming weighed down further by guilt. Yet she had to try one more time. “Mother, if you could just wait a few minutes, I’ll dress and drive you myself.”

“I have an interview in less than an hour. It will take you that long just to do your hair. Then the children will want to come, and Agnes won’t stay by herself lest something jump from behind the drapes and grab her. If I wait, it’ll take up the time I’ve allowed for getting lost, which I won’t because I took down the directions very carefully.” Imperiously, she held out a perfectly manicured hand.

Justine tried to erase images from her mind; a fiery crash, the telephone call…the rush to the hospital. With the same reluctance with which she would approach a snake, which was not ever unless forced, she reached into her robe pocket. She put the car keys into her mother’s hand, knowing there would be no redemption for her in her mother’s eyes if she refused again.

“Call me if you have any problem, call me when you get to the interview. You’ll have time. They always make you wait. And don’t forget to give turn signals, don’t tailgate, and remember to stay on your side of the road.”

“I will, dear. All of those things. Now, which key goes in the ignition? The square or the round? I always forget.”

“The square one,” Justine said and bit the inside of her lip.

The morning sun was golden warm; the breeze rippled low making the webs of moss in the trees sway gently. Chickens came up to the back door hoping for a handout, blackbirds swooped and woodpeckers pecked. Justine didn’t notice.

The telephone was mute.

For the remainder of the morning she lived with growing apprehension and a self-recrimination that refused to allow her to concentrate on her own work.

Over a lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches she lectured the children. “Don’t either of you ever consider asking me if you can drive the car until you’re twenty-one, and then only after you’ve had years and years of driver’s education.”

“I’d rather have a motorbike anyway,” said Pip.

“How old is twenty-one?” said Judy Ann. “As old as Grandma?”

The phone rang. Justine answered it before the first ring died. “You promised to call me as soon as you got there!” she hollered into the receiver.

“Ain’t been nowheres,” said Wheeler.

“I’m sorry,” Justine said, deeply embarrassed. She called Agnes to the phone and hovered until the older woman put her hand over the speaker and said indignantly, “Justine, do you mind?”

A second phone call came at ten minutes after two. It was her contact at the insurance company wanting to know how she was progressing on the software. Fine, Justine told him, excellent. Glad to hear it, said the contact, to which Justine replied she had every intention of collecting the bonus they had promised if she brought the project in on time. The contact chuckled and said the company had just been licensed in two more states and the computer network was of utmost importance now and would it be possible for her to complete the software and instruction manual ahead of schedule? Say by the end of August instead of September. The company was prepared to up the bonus to five thousand dollars. And Justine heard herself agreeing because Pauline had no doubt had a crash and was at this moment in some hospital emergency room and she would need all the money she could lay her hands on to call in specialists to repair bones and do plastic surgery. Undoubtedly Pauline had gone through the windshield because, foolishly, Justine had forgotten to remind her to buckle the seat belt.

If Pauline had told her the name of the company for which she was to interview, Justine failed to recall it. At three-thirty she called all the area hospitals. No Pauline Gates, injured or applicant.

At five-thirty Justine was lying prostrate on the sofa with a cool cloth over her eyes.

Lottie sat in her chair, trying to console her. Used to, it’d take Elmer two days to travel down to Mobile, she said. And up to a week there and back if rain had rutted the roads and bogged down the wagon. Why, Pauline’s hardly had time to turn around.

“Maybe she missed the turnoff from the highway,” suggested Agnes.

“If she did,” said Pip, “she’s all the way to Florida by now.”

“Disney World is in Florida,” said Judy Ann. “Grandma wouldn’t go there without taking us, would she?”

A car door slammed.

As one the family raced to the front porch.

One foot on the bottom step, Tucker looked up, startled, and in a very few seconds his brain had catalogued their expressions, the same as those that had greeted him the night he’d found them all on his doorstep. “Let me guess,” he said. “The chair did a two-step in broad daylight.”

“No. Mother’s lost.” The scope and shape of Justine’s eyes were exaggerated, filled with anxiety. “She took off in the car this morning and hasn’t come home or called. She was supposed to call.”

“She went to get a job,” said Judy Ann.

“She did?” Tucker looked at Justine from beneath his brows. “And that’s what has you so upset?”

“She’s not an experienced driver. She’s not experienced at anything!”

“Yes, she is,” said Agnes. “Sarcasm.”

Justine whipped around. “You’ll be sorry you said that if she’s dead!”

Mumbling, Agnes retreated into the house.

“Hey,” Tucker said, taking the steps two at a time and enclosing Justine in his arms. “Calm down. Here, sit on the steps.”

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where she went. When she gets home, I’m going to kill her, I swear I will.”

Tucker signaled to the kids. “Come on. I’ve got something for each of you in the truck.” To Judy Ann he presented a very small, very thin, gray-striped kitten. “Somebody dumped her on the job site. Think you can take care of her?”

“Ooooo, she’s so cute. Oh, Mommy, can I keep her?”

Another mouth to feed, Justine thought, but she agreed. “She looks hungry and scared, maybe you can fix her a dish of milk.”

For Pip, Tucker went to the bed of the truck and hauled out a huge cardboard box. He spread some of the contents out on the flattened tailgate; an ancient thirty-five-millimeter camera, film spools, developing equipment, a film editor. “One of the guys on my crew bought a house. This stuff was in the attic. They were going to toss it out. I thought you might like it. Some of the chemicals are dangerous, so be careful. There’re instruction books in there, read them first. Got it?”

“Oh man, this is great! Mom! Look at this stuff.” Justine was hard-pressed to raise any enthusiasm for inanimate objects.

Tucker shooed him into the house. “Clean it up and show it off later, sport.”

Tucker plopped down next to Justine. “Now, listen to me. There’s a good three or four hours of daylight left. If your mother isn’t home by dusk, we’ll go look for her.”

“If anything goes wrong, she can’t cope.”

“Sweetheart, believe me, your mother can cope. She had me rearranging furniture before you’d been in the county twenty minutes, and by the time the last bed was in place, she knew my life history.”

Justine couldn’t let it go. “But she was supposed to call!”

“I’m sure she’ll have a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

“If she can find her way home.”

Tucker chuckled. “I’m going home to eat and bathe. I’ll see you later, but let me leave you with a nickel’s worth of thought. You are one smart lady. Genetically speaking, some of your smarts had to come from Pauline. So why do you discount that she has any?”

“You don’t understand. She has never had to do anything in her entire life—it was always done for her. My dad treated her like fragile porcelain. She’s never had to think for herself. I’ve been truly on my own for almost a year now. I know how hard it is.”

“Justine, you cannot protect her from life. You can’t take your dad’s place. You can’t be all things to everybody.”

“Since when have you suddenly become the world’s greatest philosopher?” Anger was rising because he had touched a nerve.

“Since my mother died,” he said with a twinge of worry that he was revealing too much, “and I tried to take her place in my dad’s affections. I thought I could be good to him and for him and he wouldn’t miss her so much. It was an impossible task. He coped his way and I coped mine.”

She propped her chin in her hands and gazed off into space. “I hate people who are right all the time.”

He stood and then bent down quickly to kiss her atop her head. Her hair was fine and smelled wonderful. “Lordy, lordy,” he said. “You sure do smell good.”

“And you stink.” In truth it was a man smell that wasn’t entirely unpleasant, the muskiness a combination of earth, sun, and sweat.

“Gee whiz. To think I was going to ask you to trim my mustache tonight.”

“You would trust me to do that?”

“Why not? I’ve trusted you with other parts…my big toe, my earlobe, my—”

She laughed.

“Ah! Now, I can run along home.”

She put out a hand but didn’t touch him. “Thank you.” She watched him walk back to his truck. He had a kind of hip-shot walk that was very sexy. For the next ten minutes Pauline didn’t enter her thoughts once—until she wheeled into the drive, grazed the mailbox, and braked halfway up the stone walk.

Justine stood. Relief flooded through her. She could hear herself breathing, a kind of rushing noise inside her head. And way, way back in her brain she was cautioning herself to remain calm: a thing she managed to do until her mother was ensconced on the sofa, shoes off, sipping a glass of iced tea.

She remained calm while Pauline admired the newly acquired kitten and camera and acknowledged Agnes with barely a nod.

She remained calm while Pauline adjusted a pillow behind her back and said, “My day was more tiring than a marathon bridge game. But I feel so up. I achieved something! I never really understood when Evan got all excited about a business deal. Now, I do. I even understand what you mean about being independent, Justine. It’s exciting! I had a wonderful, wonderful day.”